About four hours of early Van Halen demos available for streaming

About four hours of early Van Halen demos available for streaming

The website Dangerous Minds has apparently discovered a YouTube video containing approximately four hours of early Van Halen demos.

Dangerous Minds describes the demos as follows:

“The first three tracks, dubbed “the Glitter demos” are supposedly the earliest recordings of the band which were released to the Internet by davidleeroth.com in 1998, though there is some conjecture that the Paul Revere and the Raiders cover may have been recorded much later in Van Halen’s career.

The next four tracks are rumored to be from 1973, but are most likely from 1974 based on a review of the band’s timeline. One story says that when Michael Anthony joined the band on bass, they handed him this tape and told him to learn the songs. David Lee Roth plays guitar on the track “Angel Eyes.” The sound is somewhat rough on these.

The following seven tracks, ending with “Woman in Love,” are a band-produced demo recorded at an unknown location, possibly either the defunct Hound Dog Studios in Los Angeles or David Lee Roth’s basement.

The next twelve songs, from “On Fire” to “Runnin’ With the Devil,” are from the excellent Gene Simmons demo, which has been widely bootlegged under the title “Zero.”

The next 25 songs from “Let’s Get Rockin’” to “Happy Trails” are the 1977 Warner Brothers demo produced by Ted Templeman and Mo Ostin. This is the best version I’ve heard of these demos.

The five songs after that are from Pasadena Rehearsals from October 15, 1977.

The next nine songs are studio outtakes from the Women And Children First sessions.

Then follows some instrumental studio jam session outtakes from the 1984 sessions.

The entire thing rounds out with a couple of interviews and a goof-off session of the Van Halen members singing over the top of Nicolette Larson’s “Gonna Take a Lot of Love.”

According to the uploader, these are the time stamps of the various sessions:

“Glitter” demos (1973?) – 0:00:00
Cherokee Studios demo (1974) – 0:7:25
Dave’s basement? (1975-76) – 0:20:22
Gene Simmons/Zero (1976) – 0:47:37
Warner Brothers demo (1977) – 1:27:32
Pasadena rehearsals (1977) – 2:52:30
Women and Children First sessions (1980) – 3:06:16
1984 jam (1983) – 3:39:01
“79th and Sunset” from interview with David Lee Roth (1982) – 4:03:33
“Crossroads” cover from interview with Eddie Van Halen (1984) – 4:05:29
“Gonna Take a Lot of Drugs” with Dave and friends (unknown date) – 4:08:18″

You can read the rest of the article at Dangerous Minds.

– YouTube

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